Getty Museum

A Draped Figure Holding a Book

Date

about 1380

Medium

Point of the brush, heightened with white gouache,, on greenish blue prepared paper

Culture

Italian

Department

Drawings

Institution

Getty Museum

To model this figure in space, the unknown artist used the green ground as the middle tone while liberally applying opaque white bodycolor for the highlights and drawing in the shadows and outlines with ink. The sheet appears to be tinted with a mixture of blue, possibly indigo, and green. The green may be the earth pigment *terra verde,*frequently used as a ground for drawings and paintings in the 1300s, probably because it was widely available. The drawing's subject matter and purpose are uncertain, but it may be one in a series of allegorical representations of saints. It could have been a study or a student's copy after another artist's drawing. This drawing was discovered around 1653 among a group of drawings in Perugia, Italy.

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